omen of your age, or indeed of any age, is
Fortune so indulgent a fairy godmother as that!"

Astonished and slightly resentful at the sharpness of her guest's
unprovoked onslaught, Damaris had dropped the little bunch of trinkets
and backed into her corner of the sofa.

"Colonel Carteret has gone," she said coldly, rather irrelevantly, the
statement drawn from her by a vague instinct of self-defence.

"Gone!" Henrietta echoed, with equal irrelevance. For she was singularly
discomposed.

"Yes, he started for England last night. But you must know that already,
Henrietta. He wrote to you--he told me so himself."

But having once committed herself by use of a word implying ignorance,
Mrs. Frayling could hardly do otherwise than continue the deception.
Explanation would be too awkward a business. The chances of detection,
moreover, were infinitesimal. There were things she meant to say which
would sound far more unstudied and obvious could she keep up the fiction
of ignorance. This, quickly realizing, she again and more flagrantly
fibbed. The voluntary lie acts as a tonic giving you--for the moment at
least--most comforting conceit of your own courage and perspicacity. And
Henrietta just now stood in need of a tonic. She had been strangely
overcome by the force of her own emotion--an accident which rarely
happened to her and which she very cordially detested when it did.

"Someone must have omitted to post the letter, then," she said, with a
suitable air of annoyance. "How exceedingly careless--unless it has not
been sent over from the hotel to the Pavilion. I have been obliged, more
than once, to complain of the hall porter's very casual delivery of my
letters. I will make enquiries directly, if I don't find it on my return.
But this is all by the way. Tell me, dearest child, what is the reason of
Colonel Carteret's leaving so suddenly? Is it not surprisingly
unexpected?"

"He was wanted at home on business of some sort," Damaris replied, as she
felt a little lamely. She was displeased, worried by Henrietta. It was
difficult to choose her words. "He has been away for a long time, you
see. I think he has been beautifully unselfish in giving up so much of
his time to us."

"Do you?" Henrietta enquired with meaning. "If I remember right we
discussed that point once before. I can repeat now what I then told you,
with even firmer assurance, namely, that he struck me as remarkably well
pleased with himself and his surrou